Tokyo prosecutors rearrested former Nissan Motor Co. Chairman Carlos Ghosn early Thursday on suspicion of diverting about 563 million yen of the automaker's funds for personal use via an acquaintance in Oman, which would constitute aggravated breach of trust under the Companies Law.
This was the fourth time Ghosn has been arrested over alleged financial misconduct. Ghosn had been free on bail, and detaining him once again marks an unusual development in the case.
The special investigation squad of the Tokyo District Public Prosecutors Office did not immediately comment on whether Ghosn, 65, admitted or denied the new charge.
Ghosn was indicted on a separate charge of aggravated breach of trust in January. After being held for 108 days at the Tokyo Detention House in the Kosuge district of Tokyo, Ghosn was released on bail on March 6. Even after Ghosn had been indicted on the separate charge, Tokyo prosecutors had continued their investigation into a total of about 100 million dollars (about 11 billion yen) paid from Nissan funds to entities in several Middle Eastern nations, with a focus on the so-called Oman route.
According to the special investigation squad and other sources, Ghosn allegedly arranged payments of about 15 million dollars (about 1.7 billion yen) from a secret Nissan fund called "CEO reserves" to a dealership in Oman between December 2015 and July 2018.
Ghosn was Nissan's chief executive officer at the time, and the payments to the dealership, Suhail Bahwan Automobiles (SBA), were allegedly made via Nissan Middle East, a consolidated Nissan subsidiary based in the United Arab Emirates. Ghosn is suspected of sending about 5 million dollars (about 563 million yen) of this money to a bank account under the name of an investment company that he effectively owned, thereby causing financial damage to Nissan.
SBA's owner is a long-time acquaintance of Ghosn. Between about 2012 and 2018, Nissan paid a total of 35 million dollars (about 3.9 billion yen) to SBA nominally as "incentives." This money was then sent on to Good Faith Investments (GFI), a Lebanon-based investment firm. An Indian executive at SBA was the chief executive officer of GFI, which appears to have been a paper company.
Some of the money that flowed to GFI is thought to have been moved to a company run by Ghosn's wife and sent to a U.S. investment firm at which Ghosn's son is the chief executive officer. The special investigation squad suspects the 5 million dollars that was channeled to Ghosn, and over which he was arrested Thursday, was used for private purposes.
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